UK consumers will spend £1 billion on mobile content in 2007, according to research released by GfK M².
The research company says the figure represents an increase of more than £100 million year-on-year. It puts the total value of the UK mobile phone market at £15billion.
It appears games are leading the content charge - GFK says in the year to March 2007, UK mobile users spent £83 million on mobile games, compared to £76 million on ringtones and just £23 million on music. The the mobile gaming market is worth eight times the current video download market.
Driving the boom in mobile content is the availability of technology. In the UK, 90 per cent of phones have Java functionality, 45 per cent have a memory card slot and nearly half have USB compatibility.
Aaron Rattue, GfK M² business group director, said: "Mobile content has been predicted to be the next big revenue stream for the telecommunications industry for some time. Our research shows that this is set to be a reality in 2007. It’s interesting to see how mobile gaming has really caught the imagination of the UK consumer, with more spent on games than ringtones in the last year."
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